On being a micro-analyzer and hyper-reflector
I leaned my head back a foot from the mirror and immediately knew that the 5 Q-tips I grabbed from the bathroom were not going to be enough; my black winged eyeliner still looked haphazardly loped-sided. I found no humor in this, sticking the little cotton sticks in my mouth and rubbing them on my eyelids to create the straightest tiny lines I could. Except for the sort of intense eye makeup that my mom once called my armor, the skin around my eye area was getting more and more red.
A famous YouTube makeup guru I used to watch in middle school once said, when his remarkably filled-in eyebrows didn’t match, “They’re sisters, not twins.” He laughed when he said that, looking right into the camera in a very Generation Z-style attempt to create a parasocial connection with his subscribers. I guess that on-camera tactic worked enough for me to remember all these years later, but now remembering it made me mad because laughing was the last thing I could do. My eyes looked like second cousins once removed at best. I have to be out the door in 10 minutes. I’m already running late, and I look like a clown.
When I got up from my chair to go back to the bathroom to grab the entire box of Q-tips, I knocked into my cabinet with three vast stacks of DVDs sitting on top. Dog Day Afternoon, Talk to Her, and Annie Hall fell to the wood floor, already covered in the clothes I was trying on to see what looked the best with my jeans. Most of the DVDs were given to me by my Dad when he got rid of our DVD player, and our television setup succumbed to the modern revelation of streaming services. I collected a good chunk of the DVDs myself, mostly from thrift stores and the stoops of people in my neighborhood trying to clear out their clutter. It’s funny to me how common it is to see a Brooklyn home with a bunch of DVDs in front of it. Once, when I was walking home from a yoga class, a random brownstone gifted me Fight Club, Harold and Maude, Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and a double feature of Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi and Desperado. I was thrilled to get them for free, and I couldn’t believe someone would want to rid their home of those cinematic masterpieces. But I guess one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
As I picked up the fallen video tapes, I remembered the lucky day I got those DVDs and the Hector Urquhart “trash” proverb. I remembered that I needed to keep filling up my own trash can, which was already brimming with little black Q-tips. I sloppily put the discs back, annoyed that my treasured physical media collection was now holding me up by a precious minute I could have been using to ensure I looked as perfect as possible.
I pulled my act together by scrapping the eyeliner entirely. Washing it off felt like raising a little white surrender flag like I was the losing animal in a Tom and Jerry episode. I left the house on time but very self-conscious that the skin around my eyes looked red from rubbing off all the makeup. But I was pretty sure I looked fine. At least, I did according to the mirror in my room, the mirror in the bathroom, and the mirror by the door in the entryway.
As I walked to and waited for the subway, I had all my “liked” songs on Spotify on shuffle. It’s an eclectic mix of 1,068 songs; I didn’t really know what I was in the mood for. I listened to bubblegum pop hits from this past summer, obscure 70s French tunes I heard in a Bernardo Bertolucci film, trap songs from 2018 with lyrics a little too politically incorrect for me to admit I enjoy openly, and synthy 80s New Wave songs I’ve liked since I was little because my parents always used to play it in the car. There was zero cohesion to what I was listening to; the only unifying factor was that I liked everything. I have 125 playlists; they all have different moods, vibes, and genres because I love listening to a specific, organized mix of songs to tailor my energy involuntarily.
I honestly didn’t know where my “energy” was because I was now in a sensitive mood and submerged far too deeply in my own thoughts. Every song of a different genre that played reminded me of a different part of myself, and I felt like those parts didn’t really work together as one.
It reminded me that there are songs I exclusively listen to at the gym—songs that remind me of a person I miss, songs I used to cry to but now don’t, songs that are so popular that if I had told my freshman year of college self that I’d love them now a couple of years later, I would have been upset that I became more “basic” as I got older and not “cooler.”
It also reminded me of 15 minutes ago when my stupid DVD collection that I have been compiling for years infringed on my trying to make my eyeliner look good. I knew that waking up late was the main factor, but I did wonder if those DVDs weren’t there, if maybe I would have had enough time to do my makeup how I wanted to. But that thought made me feel a bit blue because if my DVDs weren’t there, a part of me that makes me myself would also be gone. My eyeliner probably would have been messed up by the outside world anyway. It was windy and cold, and my eyes are prone to tearing up.
I wanted someone to slap me on the wrist for the thought of having no DVDs, but it’s not like anyone around me on the subway platform had any idea what I was thinking about. I know that “stuff” doesn’t define you or make you happy. But my DVDs do. They remind me of movie nights with my family, inside jokes with my friends from the film fraternity I was in my first year of college, and scenes that inspired dreams of being a director myself.
I thought about how if I weren’t trying to look pretty or cool and do eyeliner that’s honestly out of my skill range, I wouldn’t have knocked over some of the DVDs my dad gave to me and then been subconsciously worried all day that they were scratched and ruined forever. Someone who wants to be a director wouldn’t ever do that; they would treat their physical media collection with care. They would probably organize it by title and genre and put it on a nice shelf somewhere where there was zero chance of it being knocked over. I wondered if directors like Greta Gerwig or Sofia Coppola, or Ava DuVernary would give a shit the way I clearly did if their eyeliner looked lopsided. Maybe they would. Perhaps they wouldn’t.
I felt stupid that being bad at eyeliner put me in a lousy headspace at the start of my day because I knew I should save getting into these states of mind when something bad actually happened. I mentally prepared myself to hold a relatively normal demeanor for the rest of the day because this didn’t feel like an appropriate reaction to having to take off part of your makeup after trying really hard to make it work. It’s not really what people want to hear you complain about, when you mess up your eyeliner and have to take it off. At least, I think that’s what people don’t want to hear about because it’s not something that comes up often in conversations I have. I mean, it’s kind of a boring thing to talk about, and I have an underlying thought that it makes you seem like a shallow person with skewed priorities. It’s acceptable to complain about other things though, like burning your toast in the morning or stubbing your toe. But maybe I’m just saying that because I secretly think I’m shallow with skewed priorities. I know I’m not, though. I just wanted to look good that day, and I made doing makeup a hell of a lot deeper than it should have been. I wish I didn’t do that; I wished I didn’t care so much about the eyeliner or DVDs or music, but this is not what I’d use a “go back in time” genie wish on. That is being saved for the French Revolution.
When I finally got on the train, I got a seat right next to the window. I caught my reflection in the darkened plexiglass that I’m sure hasn’t been cleaned in months. Amists the bumps of the ride, I once again tried to look for the red smudges around my eyes. Jesus Christ, had I learned nothing? My face blurred into something almost soft, almost forgivable in the dim, flickering light. And I actually realized that I didn’t care anymore. For a second, I let myself silently but, without any change in my expression, for I was on public transportation, laugh at myself because it’s honestly funny how the mind (or maybe it’s just me) can overcomplicate little things when you let it wander a bit too much.
When I went over the Manhattan Bridge, I went on TikTok instead of looking at the view of the Brooklyn Bridge. I saw a post from that same makeup YouTuber, and seeing his eyebrows made me remember his idiom: “They’re sisters, not twins.” I hated it this morning, dismissing it as dismissive, but now, I kind of get it. Maybe it is okay. Actually, I know it’s okay. It’s okay that my DVDs aren’t organized perfectly, and I knocked some over. It’s okay to listen to random songs I like instead of a playlist. It’s okay to be bad at eyeliner. And it’s just okay to enjoy the things I do. They don’t have to be similar. Or “make sense” together. None of that actually matters.
